Trueish Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel (10 page)

“I am not an Arab! And it is a shamshir,” Mo screamed. He hurled the sword at the ground in a snit worthy of a toddler. “Not a knife. Not an Aladdin sword. A shamshir. It is the best sword in history!”

“That is why Persia conquered Greece,” Marika said. She slapped her forehead. “Oh, I was mistaken. That happened in a different universe.”

I threw the phone back to Mo. “Nobody’s home.” I raised my hands in a T. “Timeout,” I said. “I need to make a call.” Everybody stopped, even Aladdin. I dialed Aunt Rita.

“Come,” she said, the way she always did.

“Do you know a Pontic Greek named Harry Harry?”

“I know him,” she said. “Why?”

“He sent a guy with an Aladdin sword to cut off my head.”

“Tell the infidel I will smite her if she says Aladdin one more time,” Mo shouted.

“Where are you?” my aunt asked.

I looked up at the stone tower. “Meteora.”

“Meteora? What’s in Meteora except rocks, virgins, and tourists?”

Marika said something behind me, and then I heard Takis say, “Is that my wife?”

“Tell him we’re on an adventure,” I said.

Aunt Rita told him. His voice went Chernobyl. “On an adventure? She is supposed to be home with our children, not out having adventures!”

“Did you get that?” I asked Marika. She nodded.

“Put me on speakerphone,” Takis barked at me.

“No.”

“Put me on the speakerphone now.”

“Can you do telekinesis?” I asked him.

“What? No.”

“Then you won’t be going on speakerphone.”

“
Gamo ti Panayia mou
,” he swore. Then he yelped.

“What did you do to him?” I asked my aunt.

“Flicked his ear.” Her voice became deep, serious. “Who did Harry Harry send?”

“Some Persian named Mo. Skinny, wearing sandals, more hair on his face than a dog’s butt.”

“That sounds like most of his guys.” She lowered her voice. “Is the other assassin still with you?”

“He’s here. Why?”

“Look, we went to see Fatmir the Poor, but someone else got to him first. He’s dead.”

That wasn’t all; I could hear it in her voice. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Somebody cut out his heart. Leave Harry Harry to Takis and me. We’ll go see him next.”

“Thanks.” My voice wobbled out on unsteady legs. Fatmir the Poor had wanted me dead, but that didn’t meant the feeling was reciprocal. I would have been satisfied if he had agreed to forget about Elias killing me.

“Anything for my niece.” She blew me a kiss and disconnected.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?” I asked Elias.

He looked dubious. “Good news.”

“Fatmir is dead.”

He looked stricken. “If that is what you call good news, I don’t want to know the bad.”

“That was both,” I admitted. “Bad for you, good for me.”

He sat on the rocky ground, elbows on his knees. “What will I do now?” he said in pathetic voice that tugged at my empathy strings. In a way, I was responsible for his financial situation. If I’d let him kill me maybe he could have collected his moolah before Fatmir lost heart—literally.

I thought about it a moment. An idea popped into my head. “You could make sure Mo doesn’t kill me, and I’ll make sure you get paid.”

“Be your bodyguard?”

“Kind of.”

“I could do that,” he said, perking up.

“Traitor,” Mo cried. “Yankee pig clicks her fingers and what do you do? You lift your skirt and jump! In my village
you
make
her
jump. Then you take her home and force her to have your babies and never let her drive again.”

“You—“ I stabbed at the air with my finger. “—My aunt and cousin’s cousin’s cousin are going to have a sit-down with your boss.”

“Harry Harry is not the boss of me.”

“You said that already. I mean your employer. And in the meantime, don’t even think about killing me.”

“You are the Thought Police, but you cannot control what is in here.” He tapped on his head like it was a ripe watermelon. “In my head I will be cutting off your head fifty different ways, then violating your dead body.”

Marika slapped the back of his head. “Who raised you, eh? Your mother would cry if she could see you.”

“She has no eyes, how can she cry or see what I am doing?” We all looked at him in horror. “My father plucked them out for looking too long at a man. Unfortunately, he acted rashly. The man was her optometrist.”

Ugh.

I trotted over to where Donk was still shivering under my car, hauled him out by the leg. He flailed and struggled, but I wasn’t about to let some brat get the best of me.

“Get in the car,” I said.

“Fack you!” he said in English. Obviously he was buddies with the guys who enjoyed decorating walls and overpasses. The facks were rampant there.

I reached into the backseat, flipped the lid on Marika’s “supplies”, pulled out a gun that was about the size of a bread loaf.

Everyone hit the deck.

“Want to hear something frightening?” I said. “I have no idea how to use this. I know which end goes where, but that’s it. Marika and I are going to check out the monasteries, but first we’re going shopping. Donk, get in the car. Elias, you’re in charge of making sure Xerxes doesn’t kill me—“

“Xerxes was a sissy mama’s boy!” Mo cried.

“—Marika, you’re in charge of making sure I don’t kill Donk.”

We jumped into my yellow car and sped away, whipping the ancient dirt into a sepia tornado.

“If anyone kills Donk it will be me,” she said.

T
he best thing
about all the steps was that they eventually ran out. We had hauled ourselves up the approximately three million steps that led to the Great Meteoron Monastery, and we’d done it in long, flowing skirts that had done their best snag our feet and snap our necks. We’d left the menfolk at the foot of the tower with the cars. Elias was in charge of making sure no one got their mitts on Marika’s guns.

The low hum of tourists using their best indoor voices outside washed over us. It was the sound of people confused about whether the monastery was a church or a sedate theme park. People stopped to look at us as they contemplated one all-important question: Could they get to their phones without seeming rude? Some didn’t care. They snapped away, loud and proud.

“Greek Amish,” one guy said like they knew. The words were English, the accent American.

“Give me a break,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Amish are from Pennsylvania.”

“I didn’t know you people flew in planes,” the big guy said. He was red-nosed and seven months pregnant, the kind of guy who yelled at his television during football season. Beer was his poison and hot wings were his remedy.

“Flying horse buggies,” I said, wearing my best deadpan. “We borrowed the spell from Santa Claus.”

His mouth opened, closed, opened. He muttered something about “ ‘Murica” before shuffling away.

I looked down at my dress, then Marika’s similar outfit. She looked like a sofa, which meant I probably resembled a loveseat. “I guess we overdressed.”

“They said long skirts, we bought long skirts.”

The other female tourists were in mid-calf-length skirts that didn’t make them look like they were part of a technology-free society or religious cult.

“Looks like long means mid-calf, not scraping the ground.”

“I like it,” Marika said. “I feel pretty.”

Not me. I felt like I was this close to snapping an ankle.

W
e were standing
in front of a skull case. Interesting choice in decor. Personally, I would have gone for books, but maybe the monks were phrenologists.

Marika leaned sideways into my personal space. “There is somebody following us, and it is not your assassin.” She pushed the words out of the corner of her mouth.

I went to turn around.

“Do not turn around!” She dived into her bag and pulled out her cell phone. One push of the button later, she flipped the camera and pulled me into a cheek squeezing hug. “Selfie. Smile!” Then she let me go. “See?” She tapped the screen, zooming in on a woman two bodies back.

“Never seen her before. You?”

Marika jerked her head up. “No.”

In the photograph the woman’s gaze was stuck to the back of my head. Her hair was big, terrorized recently by a fine-toothed comb. Her makeup was inspired by 1980s MTV. She was sin—the cheap kind, found at the bottom of a bottle of Keystone Light.

“Okay,” I whispered to Marika. “We’re going to back out of here and see the rest of the monastery. Let’s see if she follows.”

Sure enough, the woman followed, always several bodies back. She was in a modest dress that was in direct conflict with her head and knee-high boots. The boots were black, flat-heeled, and laced, like combat boots that forgot to quit growing.

That’s when I spotted the man with the eagle on his shoulder. Not a tattoo, but a real eagle, its talons biting into the man’s leather vest. He was inside the monastery gates, gaze scanning the thin crowd. I grabbed Marika and pulled her into an alcove.

“What is it?”

“A man with an eagle.”

“A real eagle?”

“It’s on his shoulder, like a pirate with a parrot.”

She peered out. “That is the short-toed snake eagle.”

“You know birds?”

“Who do you think does my boys’ homework? You think they do it? No, I do it. And now I know my eagles.”

I was impressed and I told her so. She beamed, but it dimmed quickly.

“What are you thinking?” she asked me.

“That could be the Eagle.”

The man was so shady he probably cast a shadow on a moonless night. There are two kinds of men who wear leather vests. One discards his clothes for money; the other one takes money and keeps the clothes on. Both types are known for zooming away on motorcycles, often with your belongings. He was tall and a hungry kind of thin. His mirrored sunglasses were shooting lasers at passersby. The bird moved its head this way and that, missing nothing except, hopefully, us.

“Shouldn’t it be wearing one of those hoods?”

“Maybe,” she said. “My boys didn’t get to that part, yet.”

Cleopatra moved into the frame. I watched to see if her gaze snagged on Eagle Guy, but the transition from left to right seemed smooth. She turned around, hands on hips, mouth like a murder scene.

“Keep an eye on them both,” I said. I zoomed in on the selfie again, cropped her face, and texted it to Aunt Rita.

Five seconds later, my phone shivered.

Who is that?

I was hoping you knew.

No, but I want that lipstick. If you get a chance, ask her.

My aunt had priorities. Lipstick was one of them.

“Maybe she’s another assassin,” Marika said. “You do seem to be collecting them.”

“I wonder what happens when I get the whole set? I wouldn’t mind exchanging them for a cool prize.”

We got lucky. That’s all I could say about what happened next. Latex Lucy flubbed her super-stealthy tailing moves and backed up to the alcove. Marika grabbed her in a headlock and dragged her in. The woman was quicker than a cobra. Takis’ wife had mad skills.

“Okay,” Marika said, pushing her catch against the wall. “Tell us what you know.”

“That was pretty good,” I said. “Takis give you some tips?”

She scoffed. “This is how I get the truth out of the boys.”

Latex Lucy’s face twisted. She made a sound like a cat about to hawk up a dead mouse. Then she spat in Marika’s face. The clear mass stuck to Marika’s forehead, then began a slow slide down her nose.

Marika gasped. Her tan skin flashed red.

“Tell me this
vromoskeela
did not spit on me.”

Vromoskeela
was right. Spitting in someone’s face makes you a dirty female dog. Even I knew that.

“It could have been bird poop, but I don’t think so.”

“Bird
kaka
would be better, because the bird doesn’t know what it is doing.”

Latex Lucy’s head swiveled. Her gaze latched onto Marika’s. “You must be a terrible wife. I feel sorry for your children that they have to tolerate you.”

“Who are you?” I demanded.

“Cleopatra.”

Marika’s eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”

I touched her arm, the one pinning Cleopatra’s neck to the ancient wall. If I didn’t diffuse the situation it was entirely possible she’d send Cleopatra to the afterlife without all the proper burial customs. What if the monastery didn’t have enough bandages?

“Before you kill her, let’s find out what she wants, okay?”

“What I want,” the wannabe Queen of the Nile said, “is for this donkey to let me go.”

“Her name is Marika,” I said. “She’s with me. And my name is Katerina Makris.”

“I know who you are,” she said, “and I know what that is.”

Marika said, “Let me kill her.”

“We still don’t know who you are,” I said. “But so you know, in my head I’m calling you Latex Lucy.”

“My real name is a queen’s name.”

“Yeah, she was a queen. Right up until she got dead. Why are you following us?”

“I’m not following you, I’m walking behind you. That’s not a crime.”

I thought about that a moment. “Probably it is somewhere. Maybe North Korea. Who are you?”

She flashed an expensive smile. She looked cheap but her dental work was top dollar. “Nobody.”

Marika stepped on her foot.

“Okay, okay, I’m following you.”

“Why?” I rolled my eyes. “Oh, God, are you trying to kill me, too? Because I have to say, that’s getting old.”

The real Cleopatra’s low-rent sister shrugged. “We’re looking for the same person. I can’t find him but I found you. I figured I’d stick close, see what you dig up.”

“Who? My father?”

“Why should I tell you? My boss thinks you’re stupid, and I’m inclined to agree, but you’re all we’ve got.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

Her lips pressed together. They were morbidly fascinating, like slugs this close to exploding.

“Fine,” I said. “Get out of here and stop following me.”

“I can if I want to.” She winked and slithered away.

Eagle Guy was sitting on a bench with his bird. He was giving me the willies.

“Are you going to talk to him?” Marika wanted to know.

Was I? Emotions swam around inside me. Eagle Guy’s whole package was intimidating enough without the bird. The eagle was hard liquor icing on a moonshine cake. But I’d come to Meteora for a good reason. I wasn’t about to walk away from a lead, no matter how sharp its talons were. This could be Dad’s life or death.

“On it,” I said.

As I trotted over, I tried to look like I wasn’t recruiting for a cult. Without looking at me he stood and began to wander away, headed toward the monastery gardens. Even the bird was ignoring me.

“Excuse me,” I said.

He didn’t stop.

I picked up the pace. So did he. I followed him down a short flight of steps, lined with shrubs potted in terra cotta, then he jagged right and vanished through an arched doorway. I hoisted my skirt up several inches and slipped through, plunging into darkness. The light behind me was close to useless. Most of it had been filtered out by a giant fig tree, its limbs leaning over the small courtyard. So my pupils had to pick up the slack and dilate, but they were moving slowly.

By the time I could see I was out of luck. Eagle Guy was gone.

I hiked back to where Marika was waiting, eyeing postcards in the tiny souvenir shop.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said to Marika.

“All this old stuff is creepy anyway,” she said. “I thought it would be different.”

“Different how?”

“Not so old.”

O
n solid ground
there was another new guy. He had the kind of face that was easy to forget and difficult to describe to a police sketch artist. He was what they had in mind when they invented the word
beige
.

“This is Lefty,” Elias said. Somewhere along the way he’d found a bag of sunflower seeds. He chewed, spat, tossed another seed into his mouth. “He says he’s here from Cyprus to kill you.”

“Of course he is,” I said. I nodded to the new guy, whose real name was probably Lefteris. “Join the club. Who’s your employer?”

“I freelance,” he told me. “It changes. This job is for some asshole from Delphi.”

“How do you do taxes on something like that?”

“Private contractor.”

“Okay, well, Elias is in charge of you two—“ I swung my finger from Lefty to Mo. “—not killing me until my family’s had a sit down with your employers. Can you handle that?”

Lefty’s face said he couldn’t. “Don’t kill the target, don’t get paid. I like getting paid.”

“And I like being alive.”

He planted himself on the ground, legs apart, arms folded. “I’m here to get paid.”

My eyes rolled so hard I came this close to spraining something. I turned to Mo. His loose hinges were about to become useful. “Are you going to let him scam you out of your paycheck?”

“Never! Cypriot pig!” Then he dropped his carpet on the ground, followed it down there. “Allah, a million apologies, I did not mean to speak to the unclean Yankee woman.”

Who watches the watchers? The other watchers, of course.

Speaking of …

I pulled out my phone, opened the selfie Marika snapped, and showed it to the men. Elias and Lefty shook their heads. Donk’s eyeballs popped out of his skull, then he hoofed it back to the car, hands clasped in front of his groin.

“I cannot look at that,” Mo said. “She is unclean. That woman wants men to do perversions upon her.” He opened one eye and took a good gander. “Is it too much to ask that she is a virgin?”

I know we’re not supposed to judge books by their covers, but I was sure Cleopatra had hopped onto the train to Pound Town years ago.

“Probably she’s still a virgin at something,” I said.

“Like reading,” Marika said, then she pointed. “What is that?” It was veering into late afternoon and the sun was gearing up for one obnoxious last gasp before conceding its throne. There was a speck falling out of the sky, and it was coming right for us.

“Eagle,” Mo said. “When I was a child we had one as a pet. It would hunt rats for our breakfast.”

He was right: It was an eagle. An eagle that looked suspiciously like the one on Eagle Guy’s shoulder. And it was holding something in its talons.

It swooped past, and as it did it dropped its payload.

“Bomb,” Elias hollered. I threw myself onto the package.

Everyone else scattered.